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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

"Now let's kick it over to our newest Wrecks correspondent Violet, who is currently on location at her sister Ruby's third birthday party. Violet?"

"Jen, I'm sitting here in witness to the worst Wreck I've seen in my admittedly young life. Take a look at the disaster area left behind by what could only be called a Disney Princess Explosion.

"As you can see, there is airbrushing, hearts, garland, blobbular "rosebuds", and green leaves growing UP the "waterfall" - not to mention the fact that you have to clear off all the toys before you can even cut the thing! And don't get me started on those three '3' candles - I may only be 10 months old, but even I know that math doesn't add up."

"Wow, Violet, isn't that kind of harsh? I mean, the colors are pretty."

"No, it's a representation of the blatant over-commercialization that is running rampant in our society, that's what it is. Would you like to hear my dissertation on the breaking down of social conventions by the media barons?"

"Oh, look at the time! Sorry Violet, but we need to wrap this up."

"No problem; time for my nap anyway. Hey, Mom! Guess who needs a fresh diaper? Eh? Hey, what is that? Oh heck no, I am NOT wearing a Princess themed diaper! No, absolutely not! You're making a mockery of my beliefs, woman! Get that away from me!"

"That was Violet, my youngest Wreckporter, folks!"

Cassie F. (aka Mom), don't worry; she'll love that hat by the time she turns 3.

I think the ice is melting in Walt Disney's cryo-chamber! He's trying to say something... "That was never MY vision!" he says. Poor guy, he never should have witnessed that. Luckily, he's thawed out just enough to spin. Eternally.

In defense of the cake decorator (having once been one myself), I can tell you that's pretty darn close to what the kit instructions tell you to do. I can also tell you that I always despised having to put 8 lbs. of neon icing all over this cake. As for the rest of the "coordinating" partyware, that's Mom's fault for making it a Wrecktastic party.

Ruby still talks about that cake (it was the BEST ever!) and the extra cheesey princess stuff was my way of giving in to the extra cheesey cake. (If you can't beat them, join them!)And Violet's expression matched ours exactly. Everyone but Ruby had that look when we looked at the cake!Two months later she chose "Snow White" as her halloween costume.

My new ruling: You either have the nunber candle, or you have enough traditional birthday candles to equal the age. Not both.

The only exception is the first birthday, when the number one candle may be used solo, which would also equal the age.

And, yeah, that does look like a three-year-old girl's ideal birthday cake. It's not elegant, by any means, but it's bright and colorful and has lots of pretty toys. Still seems a little over-the-top, and I bet the birthday girl would've been happy with just one princess.

I think what Violet is trying to tell us is that her diaper doesn't stink as much as that over the top cake does! Ruby was probably almost 4 by the time they got all that stuff off the cake to just cut it!

Ok, I'm sorry, but with the 3 "3" candles, all I can think of is the t-shirt that has 3 "3s" in a row stating below it, "I'm only half evil"....http://www.whatonearthcatalog.com/graphics/products/regular/AT5702T.jpg

the look. the look. it's priceless! what the ___ am i doin' here? children should never be exposed to that much icing. my favorite cake as a child, and remains to this day, was a yellow cake with chocolate icing with m&ms lovingly placed around the perimeter by my sweet momma. still request it.

When I looked at this cake, the two ads in the sidebar were both for counter terrorism training. For some reason, I find that terribly funny. Perhaps gobs of neon icing and over-hyped cartoon characters can be used to repel suicide bombers???

My almost three year old would go BONKERS over that cake. As soon as she gets home from school I'm going to show her the picture and see what her reaction is. And we've done everything in our power to keep her away from the whole "Princess" thing. It's powerless to even try and fight it.

I hate to admit, but my daughter had the EXACT same cake for her 4th or 5th birthday. We live in a small town so i had to use the local grocery store. Ours maybe was not that bad but bad enough. Shannon

I've always hated the "generic Disney princess!" thing. It's stupid. When I was younger, if you had a favorite Disney movie you could get a t-shirt with your favorite princess on it, dress up as Jasmine or Pocahontas or whatever. Now they just take their merchandise and stick 3 or 4 princesses on it and call it a day. Do you like Sleeping Beauty? Well too freaking bad, because she has to share a spot on the shirt with 4 other princesses. They're not individuals, they're all just random generic princesses! Who cares what they're names are!

But surely Mom is a fan of bright colours, having named her kids Violet and Ruby . . . .!

Wow - that cake! At first I thought there was something up with the colour settings on my screen!

Here in the UK, I don't really think we have the same 'cake culture' as in the States - at least there isn't the same 'bake house' supermarket thing happening when you can phone in an order. Some of the bigger supermarkets will print a photo onto an icing sheet and sell the cake it goes on and some small independent bakeries take orders for cakes but nothing like the scale you have over there. It's amazing - I am addicted to this site!

Well of COURSE you have to have a whole bunch of toys and candles on the cake. You've got to have one lick-able thing on the cake for each child at the birthday party to avoid the inevitable throw-downs over who gets to lick the stuff that comes off it. (And then we use it again? Ewwwwwww! And yes, I'm totally guilty of that, too!)

On a totally unrelated note, if my word verification was on a license plate, I would read it "whitey giggles." (wtygglz) :-)

So I have now spent the whole morning looking all over the internet on where to buy those cake toppers because my daughter would just squeal with glee to get that cake. She is all about the princess thing.

So...clarify something for a non-decorating type: These cakes are in some Cake Bible, and it's listed in there as something like a "#47 Princess Cake in Neon Tongue-Staining Colors"? Which is used by many Big*Store bakeries?

did no one else notice that the matching color flowers (roses?) behind the princesses looks like they left a trail of matching poo behind them? i kept waiting for Violet to point out that she would NOT like a slice from behind the princesses! of course i am sure my two-year old would have loved this cake - but when your aunt is a baker, you only get to name your theme and your aunt makes that theme as tasteful and beautiful as possible.

its a set that is designed by one of the biggest cake toy makers out there - DecoPac. and the design is pretty damn close to how it is supposed to look. i think in this case you're a little off base. it was made to look like this as per the manufacturer of the set. it isnt the decorators fault. i mean yea, the execution is a tad sloppy, but its not that bad. i guess you ran out of real cake wrecks to day eh man?

gotta love all the self-congratulatory "Thank GOD I have BOYS so I don't have to look at princess cakes!" comments. Yeah, cuz them GI Joe and Transformers and Spiderman and Pokemon are so much less offensive...sheesh...

That's what you get with cheap-ass $30 grocery cakes. You only have yourselves to blame. Go and find a talented decorator instead, sure it might cost you a bit more, but the taste of the cake & decorating talent is more than worth it!

I love the use of a 10 month old and the angle at which you described this cake. Hilarious! and sooo true too. It's hard not to get caught up in mass media spew when you have young ones but we can try.

The cake designs that you see in the display books in your favorite grocery store are approved by the license-holder- Disney, Mattel, etc. Whatever the design is, it is one of many that was presented to the Disney people none of whom have ever decorated a cake. That is why you see so many of those cakes with inedible red borders.We visit your blog daily and laugh ourselves sick.

I wonder if Violet is also concerned about the blatant discrimination that this cake is displaying. Sure, there's a red headed princess, but where are Jasmine and pocahontas? Is 'white girls and neon' a theme?

I don't know - I think this cake is charming, especially for a 3 year old! I don't think she's too concerned with all that stuff; she's thinking something more like, "HOLY CRAP! PRINCESSES!!! AND PINK!!! AND LOOK AT ALL THE COLORS!!! OMG! DID I MENTION THE PRINCESSES??? THIS CAKE IS AWESOME!!!" Lol.

Awwww, I bet the birthday girl was so happy about that cake! I know my 3 year old would have been gushing!! It's pretty audacious but I'd say as a whole WAY better than some of the other wrecks lol. Everything is spaced evenly, spelled correctly, the writing looks nice. Ok well a rainbow DID throw up on it but she's too young to know that life isn't all rainbows and roses yet, right? lol Hey I say throw some plastic unicorns on there and she'd like it even more! hehe

Some of you people are mean! It's for the birthday of a three year old little girl! She's THREE! Cassie, good on ya for all the cheesey princess stuff. I hear so many parents complaining about how ungrateful their kids are at any age. Here you have a 3 year old still gushing about a cake 2 months later! I totally understand the whole evil Disney thing and I agree about the racism and discrimination found in Disney cartoons. BUT sometimes you just can't take the princess out of a little girl. She's too young for conversations about body image and what-not just yet. Of all days to try to curtail a child's interest in something, are some of you commenters actually saying you'd do it on a little girl's 3rd birthday? Glad I'm not YOUR kids!Is the cake a wreck? Oh yeah. But that's not necessarily a horrific thing. One of the great things about cakes is that in most circumstances, a wrecked cake can still be the hit of the party! Comparing this cake to the picture in the cake bible...it's not an exat match. I've done these kits. There are often hundreds of cakes in those books. Is it likely you're talking to a cake decorator who has made every one of them a couple of times? Not really, especially if you are at CostCo or Vons or an ice cream shop (which is where I made cakes) and not a bakery. So you place an order for a design out of the bible and maybe they have the kit instructiond and maybe they don't. This kit isn't a work of fine art to begin with and then it's placed in questionable hands (questionable because when placing an order anywhere, you don't know who'll be decorating your cake or whether they're good or not). Then, you pick up a wreck!Cassie, I'm glad Ruby loved it and that you guys let her have her happy neon princess theme. Violet is adorable and you better watch he sharp wit! It's a dangerous thing at only 10 months olds. I fear her cake request! :P

These princesses were the original princesses - the ones that were there BEFORE Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan. (Beauty and the Beast came out the year before Aladdin.) So it makes sense that the four featured princesses would be those four.

I love how this epitomizes the sterotypical 3-year-old Princess cake (heck, *I* would have loved it at ANY time in elementary school!!!)

By its very nature, this cake is a WRECK princess-loving toddlers would ADORE. Thank you so much for sharing!!!!

Sadly, the cake is SUPPOSED to look like that. I made four of those cakes every weekend for about a year. However, there's not supposed to be a huge shell border on the bottom or a huge amount of leaves growing up the water.Also, the cake was for a three year old. If it were up to my three year old niece, her room would be pepto bismol pink and she'd wear her Hannah Montana wig in public every day.

I've actually made that cake several times! I think the big 3 candles helped ruin it... Also, the rose buds aren't positioned correctly, and in my opinion, the cake cannot be done well on a 1/4 sheet size. It pretty much *has* to be done on a 1/2 sheet to look good, or there's just no room for writing. Many of the cake kits are that way, too much stuff in too small a space.

The cake is (according to the directions) supposed to have light airbrushing to match the three princesses, a rose to match each one, and a trio of rosebuds (one of each color) in each lower corner. The mermaid should be sitting in blue gel to look like water, with seaweed rising up the front side of the cake (yeah, I know) to encircle the water somewhat. Seems like the three icing colors also get used on the borders. This cake is a pain to make in a hurry if you have to switch out tips and icing colors due to working in a stingy bakery.

To whoever said that they were the original Disney princesses....what about Snow White or Cinderella? And who is that in the pink anyway? Cinderella's dress was white in the film if I remember correctly.I remember those three princesses from when I was a child - these upstarts such as Belle and Ariel are newbies in comparison!

Even if Snow White is one of the original Princesses, I wouldn't want her on *my* cake. Her dress isn't pretty or fluffy, she doesn't have a pretty updo OR long flowing locks, she was a total wimp in the woods terrified of TREES. Plus, she shacked up with 7guys, used them and then took off when something 'prettier' came along.

Man, princess controversy! I'm 24 and I'll admit I still love all the Disney princesses. And to clarify, while Snow White is the OG princess, she was followed by Aurora, a/k/a Sleeping Beauty (in pink), Cinderella (in blue), Ariel (mermaid), and Belle (in yellow). Jasmine and Pocahontas came later. There's only room for so many princesses on each garish cake. And as wreck-y as this cake is (especially compared to how it's really supposed to look), I'd probably love it anyway because I'm still 8 years old inside :D

O.k, let me put this all in perspective for ya'll.When I was three my birthday cake was a cupcake (one) with a candle in it. My mom and my sister sang happy birthday to me. Yeah!So yeah wreaktastic cake for an adult....Somebody's dream cake when their three.Me, I wanted, well I don't remember what I wanted because I was three. The reason the memory stuck with me was the fact that my mom was singing at me and I think that was my earlist memory of her singing.Well, ummPeace,Clueuin

Duehicky: That's not actually true. Sleeping Beauty's dress changes back and forth between blue and pink throughout the time she's wearing it (and while it's being made) because Flora and Merryweather each want it a different colour, so they keep changing it.

Violet is the cutest little thing I've ever seen in my life! I'm pretty sure I'd have that look on my face too if I saw cake, but I'm also sure I would have loved it when I was 3!

I SERIOUSLY had this exact same cake for my daughter's birthday party last year... I was shocked at the atrocious neon icing (which undoubtedly ended up staining everything it touched), but my daughter loved it. Go figure.

As an added bonus, the plastic princesses became toys which ended up lodged in the toilet.

Oh, whoops, you're right - I forgot about Snow White. But what color would she be, anyway? Possibly yellow? Belle pulls it off so much better, and has a floofier dress. ;) I agree with the person who said they wouldn't want SW on their cake anyway. She's not quite as much of a babe as the other princesses.

The selected princesses round out the colors rather nicely (Since Cinderella can't be white, then obviously she has to be blue, which obviously means Aurora has to be pink. Right.)

I don't think I'll ever quite understand why Ariel makes the "Princess" cut (all she wears is a seashell bra!) while Jasmine doesn't, but hey, I guess Disney can't please everyone! And Pocahontas would be brown. Who would want brown on their cake?

This cake is a good concept for a 3-year old, but really poor execution, way overdone. Parents should step in when this madness goes too far. Who wants to bet that this girl will have enough makeup on her face to match the cake in about eight years?

Sadly, this is a very common cake...ugh, it's such a pain in the butt to make, too...

Just wanted to say that it's not the poor decorator's fault...that's actually a pretty good representation of the cake oh-so-many parents get for their little princesses...Blame the people at DecoPac...

I am a professional cake decorator in a successful Boston cake shop and we have to do loads of silly princess cakes simply because THAT'S WHAT LITTLE GIRLS LIKE. Albeit a bit tacky, this wreck is almost exactly like the picture included with the princess kit. So I guess what I am saying is with so many really dumb cakes out there, why pick on a cake that is exactly what the people ordered. Is our blogger getting a little snooty towards regular, not fondant overloaded cakes? Just thought I would throw that out there.

I think people are missing the point - even if it's a perfect rendition, and EXACTLY what a little girl would want - it's glaring on the eyes and really really BUSY....so yeah, it's still a wreck - it doesn't have to have fallen on the floor and been put back together and delivered to a bride to be a wreck. Tacky = wreck to me, and my boys have had a few tacky cakes themselves (think Spongebob) but it still doesn't make this any less funny.

I never said Ariel wasn't a princess....she's just not in her dress, and thus does not "go" with the other girls - she and Jasmine could have their own, no-dresses-allowed cake! LOL!

Oh, and Marcus? WAY WAY WAY WAY off base - I was always a princess fan, Disney fan - and I waited a LONG time to lose the big V, and I never dressed slutty - so you lose, theory in the toilet....maybe we'll get you the cake from that other post....

Wow. Just. . . .wow. I can see how a 3-year-old would go bonkers, but ow ow ow ow, eyesore just the same!

To the person who said the Hannah Montana cake was worse, find a picture of one and share! I refuse to believe this cake could be topped that easily in terms of Disney-themed, neon-saturated wreck-ness.

well, i am pregnant with my last and she's a girl (i have 2 boys)and...as horrible as this cake is...well, i am actually looking forward to having a cake like this! i think it would be a blast to have! what little girl wouldn't love to get her dream cake? and that one is way up there!love the baby's expression! too cute!

Agreeing with Dee...its REALLY close to the actual kit design. I decorated cakes for 2 years...and some of the "kits" are absolutely obnoxious, covered in toys, sprinkles, airbrush..you name it...and people order them like crazy...most popular were ones similar to this one and the "CARS" cake. and seeing as I quit 2 years ago, and still see that same design in superwalmart all the time....*shakes head* haha

Just another good example of offensive grocery store cake kits done badly. The borders and everything are just so huge. From experience though, I do remember this wrecktastic cake being ever so popular during my slave labor work at the grocery store bakery.(looks down shamefully.) Thank goodness I was making good ol' minimum wage to make it worth my time!!

I just found this site and think it's awesome, great concept. Keep up the great work because your stuff always cracks me up.Thanks, ~Ruby~

I think I might know why Jasmine, Snow White, Pocahontas and Mulan were left off this cake: they all wear either pants or dresses that aren't floor-length, which means they would have had to use a stand in order to be stable. Floofy dresses and rocks to pose on provide a nice wide base, so you don't have to have an extra chunk of plastic to make them stand up. I guess they could have made bases for them to pose on like they did with Ariel, but I just don't think it would have looked as natural.

As far as what a Elvira said about them all having dead mothers, I'm pretty sure that's true for all the princesses. Don't put all the blame on Disney for that, though: apparently when the Brothers Grimm collected most of these stories, they changed the mothers to stepmothers to avoid offending people by showing mothers as anything other than wonderful people who only have their childrens' best interests at heart. Of course, that doesn't explain all of the Disney characters, since a few aren't based on Grimm stories and some have no mother figure at all, but maybe once they got into the pattern with Snow White and Cinderella, they just continued it.

As for those who are bemoaning the use of commercialized princesses, all I can say is, check out the original versions of these stories sometime. Yeah, it would be nice if they'd put on some weight, but I'd still rather expose my daughter to the Sleeping Beauty with a tiny waist and her image plastered on 20 billion products than the one whose story comes complete with rape, adultery and cannibalism.

All that said, I'd agree that this is at least a marginal wreck. The kid may have liked it, but I think there have been quite a few wrecks here that were exactly what was ordered (I have trouble imagining that whoever ordered the head cake didn't know exactly what they were getting, for example, not to mention all the "all occasions" cakes). Tackiness is one thing that can definitely make a wreck, and this cake has more than its share. Still, I don't think it would have made the cut without Violet.

Kaye: Yes. I've seen the movie. But they sell crap with her wearing pink and I hate pink but like Sleeping beauty and would prefer it blue. She wore blue all the way until the ending sequence when they fought over the color. They make her wear pink b/c of cinderella. Who actually had a pink dress! lol.

Okay, here's the creepy part. I'VE SEEN A CAKE LIKE THAT IN PERSON! I work at a grocery store and I remember someone purchasing it! So I've either had an encounter with that cake, or there are more of them. They're SPAWNING!

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A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

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